Women who exercised for 1.2 to 1.6 minutes a day still lowered all major cardiovascular event risks by 30% and their risk of heart attack and heart failure by 33% and 40%, respectively.
The team concluded a clear, dose-response association for all major cardiovascular events after adjusting for other potential factors such as lifestyle, cardiovascular risk, co-existing conditions and ethnicity.
The men who exercised for 2.3 minutes saw a reduction in their risk of all major cardiovascular events events of just 11%.
“Vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity may be a promising physical activity target for major cardiovascular events prevention in women unable or not willing to engage in formal exercise,” the authors wrote.
The authors cautioned that, as with all observational studies, their research does not prove that the vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity in which the subjects engaged was the cause of their lowered major cardiovascular event risk.
Dec. 3 (UPI) — An international study reveals that even 90 seconds of high-intensity exercise per day may reduce the risk of a major cardiovascular event, like heart attack or heart failure, especially for women who don’t exercise frequently.
In women who do not otherwise engage in structured exercise or sport, a mere 1 1/2 to 4 minutes of regular, but intense, physical exertion activity, such as brisk stair climbing or carrying heavy shopping, nearly halved the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events, according to research published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal.
During a nearly eight-year follow-up period, the team monitored the cardiovascular health of 81,052 women and men, with an average age of 61, who wore an activity tracker seven days a week from 2013 to 2015. They also compiled hospital admissions and deaths from heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure.
The objective was to find out if short bursts of intense intermittent exercise as part of a person’s lifestyle could also confer the known cardiovascular benefits of longer, high-intensity physical activity in middle age, and if so, how much is required to produce a measurable outcome.
Women who worked out for 1 to 6 minutes a day still reduced their risk of heart attack and heart failure by 33 and 40 percent, respectively, and all major cardiovascular event risks by 30 percent.
After controlling for other possible variables like lifestyle, cardiovascular risk, co-existing conditions, and ethnicity, the team came to the conclusion that there was a clear dose-response association for all significant cardiovascular events. Additionally, they discovered a robust dose-response correlation between heart attack and heart failure.
However, the advantages for men were much less clear-cut.
Although the team was unable to clearly link these major events, men who engaged in only 5–6 minutes of vigorous, informal lifestyle-type exercise on average had a 16 percent lower risk of any major cardiovascular events compared to the sedentary men in the control group.
The risk of all major cardiovascular events was reduced by only 11% for the men who exercised for two to three minutes.
No significant sex differences were observed in the dose-response relationships between vigorous physical activity and the overall risk of major cardiovascular events, heart attack, or heart failure among subjects who regularly exercised, defined as regular structured exercise or walking twice or more per week.
Only in men was there evidence of a dose-response association with stroke.
Women tend to have a lower level of cardiorespiratory fitness than men at any age, so the question is crucial, according to the authors, especially for those who are unable or unwilling to exercise regularly.
The authors stated that “in women who are unable or unwilling to participate in formal exercise, vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity may be a promising physical activity target for major cardiovascular events prevention.”.
Additionally, even though the data indicated that women who did no other exercise benefited the most, they advise men who include some intense intermittent lifestyle physical activity in their daily routines to keep up their regular, intense structured exercise to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease.
As with any observational study, the authors issued a warning: their findings do not establish that the subjects’ reduced risk of major cardiovascular events was due to the intense intermittent lifestyle physical activity they participated in.
The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council provided funding for the peer-reviewed study.
